The invention describes an interdental brush with a handle and a wire element to which bristles are attached, and which extends from the handle to a free end.
Such interdental brushes are typically used to clean interdental spaces. For this purpose, bristles on the bristle head essentially form the shape of a cylinder or cone, for example. The bristle head is inserted into the interdental space and moved back and forth. The width of interdental spaces can vary greatly from person to person and even from tooth to tooth of the same person. For this reason, interdental brushes usually come with different size bristle heads, so that there is a suitable interdental brush for each interdental space. Interdental brushes are available as hygiene products to be used by the user himself, or as medical products to be used by a dentist.
If spaces between teeth are not regularly cleaned with an interdental brush, bacteria build up in these spaces, potentially leading to gingivitis, periodontitis or tooth decay. This also occurs because a regular toothbrush is not sufficient to clean such interdental spaces. Narrow interdental spaces pose the greatest risk of disease. A narrow interdental space means both teeth on either side of the space touch each other at at least one point of contact.
Such bacterial diseases occurring in interdental spaces, especially chronic gingivitis, can be diagnosed using interdental brushes. There are diagnostic interdental brushes with cylindrical brush heads for this purpose, which are inserted into the interdental space. When inserting the brush, the bristles are bent slightly towards the handle by the teeth and gums. When extracting the interdental brush, the bristles bend the other way. This spring effect caused by the bristles triggers bleeding in diseased tissue.
However, this diagnosis only works if the bristles are long enough to reach the diseased tissue, for example in the junctional epithelium. The bristles should also not be so long that they cannot bend the other way on extraction. If this is the case, they will remain bent towards the handle and will not trigger bleeding even if the tissue is diseased. If the bristles are far too long, the interdental brush cannot be inserted into the interdental space.
Since it is not clear from the outset which brush head diameter has the suitable bristle length, there are diagnostic kits with several interdental brushes, 12 for example, with increasing brush head diameters.
Starting with the interdental brush with the smallest head diameter, the head diameter should be gradually increased until gums start to bleed, or until the largest brush is used and no bleeding has occurred.
Depending on the size of the interdental space and experience of the dentist, it may still be necessary to try a large number of different brushes. This is time-consuming and requires using numerous interdental brushes.